1. Field of the Invention
The instant invention relates to an apparatus and method for handling compound words and more specifically for determining data relating to compound target words and to a data processing unit containing such an apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
An apparatus of the type herein under consideration is known from European patent specification EP-B-0 145 202. This disclosure describes an apparatus for selecting, for spelling checking purposes, records relevant to a compound word from a vocabulary. The vocabulary contains no compound words but only basic words, in order that the vocabulary may occupy the minimum of memory space. The basic words correspond to a keyword and give a unique identification of a record from the vocabulary. The problem underlying this system is to select, for the purpose of determining lexical data of compound words, a record relevant thereto from a vocabulary of this kind which does not contain compound words, in order to restrict, as far as possible, the memory space required for the vocabulary.
A first disadvantage of using such an apparatus is that a search action repeatedly has to be carried out on the entire vocabulary to process a compound word. A second disadvantage is that if the vocabulary contains a large number of basic words, which is desirable for practical use, there is considerable risk that the first part of a word will agree with the basic word such that it would be no longer possible to find a basic word for the remaining part of the word, and this will give rise to a repeated search action.